Projects, Planning and Chegutu Challenges

This week started off as every morning does at Quest with early morning PT. Andrew and Ross managed to miss Monday morning’s yoga session thanks to a faulty alarm clock (which is the excuse they are sticking to) and punishment was a refreshing (extremely cold) early morning dip in the Falcon pool.

We spent most of the week doing a lot of research in preparation for the projects that we have decided on, namely building a hide in the game park, rebuilding the jeep, installing a solar geyser and wildlife documentation.

Natural acumen continued throughout the week with Mr Macdonald who concentrated his lessons around the game park on bird identification.

Early Friday morning we set off for the annual Chegutu Touch Bowl competition held at Bryden School. We had been practising for this every evening during the week leading up to the tournament. The teams were sorted into ‘A’ and ‘B’ based on skill even though in the end the A team played quite a bit for the B team. We spent the first evening getting our camp set up and getting acquainted with the bar and a few of the other teams.

Bright and early the next morning the Quest teams started warming up for the day ahead packed with ‘intense’ rugby. Both teams played with great effort and enthusiasm. The A team drew 2 games and lost the other 3 and the B team lost all their games, but still didn’t leave empty handed, and due to the score sheet still didn’t come last! Prizes won were flashlights for the B teams and cartons of chocolate milk sachets for the A team. (These were a great hit and sustained the team on the trek across Moz and Malawi, and some packets of chocolate milk were even seen being gulped gratefully on Mount Mulanje! – ed)

The social after the rugby was great fun and the Quest teams managed to make a good dent in the bar stocks! We also made mates with a group of guys from Radical Challenge, run by former Quest manager Mr Schultz. Bedtime for most was between 2-4am after an extremely eventful night…. As they say…“What happens at Chegutu Touch Bowl, stays at Chegutu Touch Bowl”

We left Chegutu and embarked on the now famous Quest Malawi Expedition, going via the Tin Roof in Harare where we had a delicious meal and did some Quest Marketing with Mr Leared and an ex Questor Alex Hill who we are taking to Malawi to start his paddle up the Lakes of Africa.

As we write this we are still slightly in the dark as to what is to happen on our Malawi trip. Currently we are spending the night 29km from the Mozambique border waiting for what’s to come in the morning and reflecting on the journey so far.